The Specter of Ghost Guns

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor at Large
The Black media has been writing about the 195 interstate north-south iron pipeline for decades. Gun makers had busy lobbyists supporting politicians on every level in many states. Since gun violence has been reported as hitting all communities, it has become a mainstream topic of conversation. Almost going viral is talk about it on local and cable news, podcasts, and websites. The Black community has had the concern for a long time since guns inexplicably started showing up in large amounts.
Guns and ammo are not manufactured in Black and Brown neighborhoods, but there are those who say they are easier to get than a loaf of gluten-free bread.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that death by guns is the leading cause of death for Black children and youth.

Two weeks after a one-year-old boy died after sleeping atop fentanyl stored beneath the floorboards at a Bronx daycare, police raided Harlem’s Alay’s Daycare, finding 3D printers, several guns and parts used to assemble said guns.
Police Commissioner Edward Caban said, “We have been tracking an emerging trend involving Polymer P80 guns; or, ghost guns, as they are called. These plastic guns have been showing up more and more….the new frontier is 3D printing. 3D-printed guns are among the easiest ways to obtain a gun. They can be made in your home; they can be made anonymously; and they are cheap, costing a fraction of the price for a traditional firearm or even a P80 firearm. 3D-printed guns have dedicated online forums explaining how they work…These types of guns have captured the attention of our kids.”

It is a call to action, said Caban. “We are talking to the parents. Please check out what kids are up to, and monitor their Internet activities.”
Gun violence is increasingly commonplace. The reasons are hotly debated.
Poverty, unemployment, institutionalized racism, heightened stress, mental health issues, problems in the home and schools, and undoubtedly a degree of criminality. No question.
Choices are made. Desperation can cloud judgment, and make trigger fingers out of sound minds.
“Of course, we’ve got to focus on getting guns off the streets,” Brooklyn City Councilman Charles Barron told Our Time Press. “But, we should also focus on why there is such a great demand for guns in the first place. Why not cut off the supply – the manufacturers? They say nothing of the capitalist system that prioritizes profit over people, and creates poverty and unemployment, which leads to the hopelessness of someone who has no value in life.”

Reports say that last year 4 million people became new owners of firearms.
Hazel Trice Edney recently wrote an article entitled, “Black Youths Suffer the Most from Gun Violence in America.” In it she quotes psychiatrist Rahn Kennedy Bailey, the chairman of the department of psychiatry at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, stating;
“The volumes of guns are now so high that many people just use a gun to solve conflict when, even that person might have tried something different in the past.”
Bailey continued, “Our streets have been flooded with guns, a lot of guns. Where people have always had conflicts and had to resolve it in different ways, now they might grab you and shoot you…The sheer volume of guns is so high, a lot more violence happens.”
In a Change.org campaign the Children’s Defense Fund has launched the ‘Protect Children Not Guns,’ drive. Rae Winter’s petition states, “Guns have become the #1 cause of death among children and teenagers. There have been numerous accounts of mass shootings in schools. Sandy Hook, Parkland, Michigan State University, Uvalde, and now, Nashville.

The issue is these events feature the use of an AR-15, which is unnecessary for the everyday person to have. Since Columbine, over 338,000 students in the U.S. have experienced gun violence at school.”
Only ten states have laws on untraceable weapons, and there is virtually no federal regulation.
Ghost gun kits allow anyone to build a weapon, and areas like Philadelphia are seeing a rise in these weapons which have no serial numbers, meaning there is no record of it at all.
Some Right-to-Bear Arms groups endorse 3D printed guns as art, holding shooting competitions in Florida with these legal weapons. Guns being produced include pistols, sub-machine guns, and automatic weapons.
These weapons can be homemade for a cost of $300 plus, and with about 18 hours to make the frame of a firearm, and four or five hours to assemble the gun with metal or plastic parts.
All the process takes is instructions – possibly off the internet, rolls of plastic, a 3D printer, and some intent.

However, the National Shooting Sports Foundation disputed the immediate danger of 3D weaponry, “Despite rhetoric about ‘undetectable’ firearms, if this technology were to reach the point in the future where it could be used to produce fully functional firearms, some critical components of the firearms and magazines, e.g. bolt, barrel liner, springs, would still be made of steel, and hence detectable. In addition, ammunition cartridges are made with metal components that are detectable. In summary, given the exceedingly high costs and technical hurdles involved with 3D printing technology, the development of this advanced manufacturing technology does not pose a public safety risk.”
With neo-Nazi groups allegedly building arsenals of ghost guns, concern is growing worldwide though.
In the “‘Don’t want to scare, but must make aware’ way of thinking,” activist ‘Dollar’ Briggs told Our Time Press, “If a child asks for a 3D printer parents might assume it’s for a science project, but it may not be for that at all.”
Briggs suggested that it might even be students in schools. “There’s a lot of schools that have 3D printers. The kids are on websites that parents don’t go on, or even know about.
“The guns are all plastic, and people say they can go from $175 to $1000. They can get a Glock or a throwaway pistol for $400. In Virginia, a ghost gun is about 3 for $1500.
“They do not look like a gun–but they are a gun. Some of them are bright neon colors, looking like toys. But they are deadly weapons.”

Briggs added, “In all the Right to Bear Arms states, if you’ve got a P.O. Box, that qualifies you as a resident. You can go into any store and buy 10 guns, they are not asking any questions. People bring them back to Brooklyn, and they’re buying them. The real story is ‘Who’s pushing them?”
Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner said the 3D printer use is “part of a larger trend into what’s become a global problem; namely, the manufacture and sale of Privately Made Firearms — or, PMFs — which include ghost guns as well as 3D printed firearms.
When made well, ghost guns and 3D-printed firearms operate just like commercial firearms. In the hands of teenagers, they can inflict just as much violence.”
In 2021, the NYPD said that they recovered 263 PMFs; 436 in 2022; and 290 so far in 2023.
“The ghost gun initiative was started in 2020,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, “Since 2020, our office has brought prosecutions based on this collaboration that involves seizures of 93 ghost gun parts, 66 ghost guns and firearms, 428 high capacity magazines and 47 silencers.”

“You’ve got an 18-year-old in his room, [with a] 3D printer. He’s not making little robotic toys, he’s making guns. That should be scary to everyone,” said Mayor Adams, speaking on Jamal Cole, the 3D printer and guns found in the Harlem daycare. “This young man was 18, and any of you who, if you have a young child, you know, technology, they’re just extremely comfortable with, and they could navigate these devices from cell phones, iPads, through so many things. And you know. These folks are preying on our children.”
“Gun violence plagues our community,” City Councilman Barron proclaimed that, “But, the real thugs are the capitalist thugs on Wall Street. Thugs that are creating poverty. Until we address what causes the youth to want to pick up the guns. The root cause is poverty, unemployment, and mental health issues caused by greedy capitalists that have no regard for human life.”
“Ghost guns are a major threat to our community,” Brooklyn activist and former OTP columnist Marlon Rice told Our Time Press. “Their very nature undermines all of the regulatory policies that the State Legislature has put in place to protect citizens from gun violence.”
The Clinton Hill-based well-known father of three, and grandfather to two added, “What we don’t need, is yet another unchecked and unregulated way for people to get their hands on guns.”